May 31, 2013

Miller Named Dean at Arizona

May 30, 2013

U of Kansas Law to Reduce Entering Class Size

This is likely the wave of the future: Kansas will enroll about 120 this fall compared to 140 in the two classes ahead (and 175 in this year's graduating class). Kansas has had good employment outcomes for its students, and this move will likely benefit future graduating classes.

Career paths: from teaching law to acupuncture

UPDATE: A reader writes: "I'm a long-time reader of your blogs, and a first-time correspondent. In light of your link to the story of Clare Dalton's transition into acupuncture, I thought you might like to read about Ken Klee's alternative healing ministry. I don't know of any other law professors interested in the mysterious arts of 'energy healing,' but I am willing to bet that Professor Klee is the only court-appointed bankruptcy examiner with a thriving side practice."

May 27, 2013

Rookie hiring summary courtesy of UCI's Sarah Lawsky...

...here. As a percentage of candidates on the market, here's how the schools fared in terms of tenure-track placement of their alumni (Lawsky's numbers are a bit different, at least in part due to a failure to count tenure-stream jobs in non-US law schools; I list only schools that had at least five candidates on the market):

1. University of Chicago (58%)

2. University of Virginia (57%)

3. Yale University (49%)

4. Duke University (39%)

4. New York University (39%)

6. University of Michigan (31%)

7. Harvard University (30%)

8. University of California, Los Angeles (25%)

9. Cornell University (21%)

9. Northwestern University (21%)

11. University of Texas, Austin (18%)

12. Georgetown University (17%)

13. Stanford University (15%)

13. University of California, Berkeley (15%)

15. Columbia University (11%)

The Stanford and Columbia performances seem anomalously low--maybe due to underreporting, and maybe due to a fluke this year.

Professor Lawsky's numbers, even allowing for the limits of self-reporting, also clearly show the steep drop-off in hiring this year, on the order of almost one-third fewer hires than in recent years.

UPDATE: Professor Lawsky's percentage chart, but just for US tenure-track hires.

May 24, 2013

Nice presentation on the U.S. News ranking methodology...

...from Pitt Dean William Carter, who had the unhappy task of dealing with a big drop in Pitt's overall rank in U.S. News. As with all such movements, it has nothing to do with the real world, and everything to do with artifacts of the ranking method. I commend Dean Carter's approach to the matter as a sensible one. (As you will see if you watch Dean Carter's analysis, there have been some minor and largely cosmetic changes in the U.S. News methodology since I wrote the "Guide for the Perplexed" ten years ago.)